


I Shall Not Want

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Vessel Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-10
Updated: 2012-04-10
Packaged: 2017-11-03 09:38:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/379981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who is Raphael's second vessel, and why did she say yes?</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Shall Not Want

The doctors say that Donnie’s in a catatonic state but, sitting in his chair, sitting in the sun, it just looks like he’s waiting. “There he is,” says the nurse, and Jael just nods, watches her brother as he sits perfectly still, like he’s been cut from obsidian, instead of shifting back and forth, toes tapping in his boots, fingers pitter-pattering against his thighs what he remembered of his piano lessons as a boy, the major chords and his minor scales.

She kneels in front him, folds his hands over hers—“Donnie?” she whispers. She looks down at his nails, at how chipped they are. She traces the rough borders of the callouses that texture his fingers. “I was surprised that I was still your emergency contact.” She bows her head, breathes softly against his knuckles, then pulls away, running her palms down her legs, smoothing away the tiny wrinkles in her slacks.

The crucifix at his neck, in the hollow of his throat, is black instead of silver. She reaches for it, smudges it clean it with her thumb.

“I have to be in court today—working a big case. “ Her mouth dips into a smile. “I think me and my client are gonna win against the defense.” She licks her lips. “I’ll be back. I promise. I’ll come back every day.”

But when she comes back, the room’s empty. “Where’s Donnie?” she asks the nurses. “Is he out for a walk?”

“He left,” they say. “Didn’t even check himself out. Just up and walked out like he was on a mission from God.”

“Oh,” Jael says.  She pulls her cell phone from her pocket because, maybe, she hadn’t heard him text or call, because it had been on silent, like it always was when she was in court. But no missed calls, no texts, no voicemail.

She swallows, forces herself not to blink because if she does her eyes’ll water, and the mascara will sting her eyes.  “Okay,” she says, slipping the phone back into her purse. “At least he’s alive.

“Was he in some trouble though?”

She goes still, breathing soft, not too loud so she won’t miss a word. “No. Why?”

“Two men came in, looking for him. FBI. One of them was wearing a tan trench coat.”

Jael can feel the smile twisting her face out of shape. “You let the FBI see Donnie? Without telling me?” She taps her chest, right on the sternum. Hurts a little bit, but she doesn’t care. “Was anyone with him? Was anyone there to make sure everything went by the book?”

The nurse shifts uncomfortably in his white tennis shoes. “No. Ma’am.”

“Don’t call me ma’am,” she says, her voice high and thin.  “This will not happen again.”

“Well. He’s gone,” the nurse says, then ducks his head, flinching a little.

She steps a little bit closer, just on the edge of his personal space. Enough to make him uncomfortable. “What were their names? Their badge ID numbers? Any identification whatsoever?”

“They seemed to be in a hurry. Like it was important business. I didn’t—I didn’t catch it.”

“Oh. I see.” There’s not even a vague taste of raspberry when she licks her lips. “I wanna see your supervisor regarding your incompetence.”

And she does, and nobody knows anything—not even the FBI whom she calls. She asks to see the security footage, and the nurse points out the two so-called agents.

If Donnie were in trouble, he’d call. He just doesn’t want to, so fine.  Still, she asks for a copy of the security footage anyway. Just in case.

She slams the car door behind her, kicks her high heeled shoes off, flexes her toes inside her nylons. Rests her wrists on the steering wheel and stares past the windshield and the splattered bug guts and swallows hard against that thumping feeling against her chest.

She shakes her head, shrugs her shoulder until her joints pops. Flips down her mirror and puts on her raspberry lip gloss.

Time to go to work.

Sometimes she takes the long way home, by the park she and Donnie used to push each other on the swings when they were kids, and where sometimes still went to write on the weekends.

But she never sees him on the park bench. Goes to his house and sees that the potted plant that used to be so leafy and green have dried up into spindly twigs, the dirt a hard dry-cracked desert. “Shit,” she whispers.  Still, she knocks on the door. Politely at first. Just a double tap with her knuckle, and then she does it harder, until she pounds on the door with both her fists. She stands on her tiptoes so that her mouth is level with the eye peep. “Let me in!” She flexes her hands against her thighs, hitches in a breath.

She could pick the lock. She knew how. But she wouldn’t. Emergencies only.  She took the mail from his box. It was so full the mailman couldn’t close it all the way.  She put a rubberband around the bundle and stuck it in a drawer for when Donnie came home. She’d call him an asshole and then give it to him and they’d split a quart of mint chocolate chip icecream on the couch.

Eventually, she puts out a missing person report. Nobody calls in any information. She had poked about regarding the individuals in the footage before, but not too seriously. Wasn’t her business.

But now—maybe it was. Time to find out who these assholes were. One of them was supposed to be dead, the other ID’ed as a man from Illinois. Jimmy Novak. Married. With a daughter. Amelia Novak filed a missing person’s three years ago.

Real classy fellow apparently.

She takes a vacation, drives up to Pontiac and Amelia closes the door behind her as she steps out, shivering, onto the porch.

“You once reported your husband as missing,” she says.

But Amelia interrupts. “He’s not. Not missing. Not anymore.” She shows Amelia the photograph of him with the other man, but Amelia’s glance slides away, and she puts her hand over her mouth, shakes her head. “I don’t want anything to do with them. I don’t know anything—“ and she’s slipping away, slamming the door in her face. Her voice is thin and weak behind the door. “Leave them be, okay? Just leave them alone.”

Jael goes back to her motel room, fills the bathtub with warm water, pours in a handful of Epsom salts. Lowers herself in and closes her eyes.

She doesn’t know where to go next. Like they’re dust on the wind, being blown down the streets and roads of America, kicking their dirt off their feet and not much else to track.

She squeezes her eyes shut. Flexes her fingers and her toes.

The water’s too cold so she gets out. Wraps a towel around herself and does the very last thing—the thing that Donnie would ask if she had done yet if he were around.

Jael kneels beside her bed. The carpet itches at her knees. “Are you there?” she says.

Silence. She recites the lord’s prayer because she learned it as a child and it comes most easily to her lips. Maybe, if she can keep going, get herself in the rhythm of it, find the ritual in it, she can ask about Donnie.

Her palms are sweating now. “The lord is my shepherd, I shall not want—“

“—Yet you do want, don’t you, Jael?”

The voice is a quiet whisper in her ear. She jerks from her knees, eyes open now, but her room is empty. 

“Do not be afraid. I am Raphael, an angel of the lord. I come to you with peace, and tidings of great joy.”

Her throat’s parched, tongue swollen in her mouth. “Does tidings of great joy include news about Donnie?”

Is that laughter? Whatever it is, it turns her insides to ice, and she shudders.

“First, Jael. Do you want?”

“The Lord isn’t actually my shepherd. So perhaps it’s not all that surprising,” she says.  She steels herself, girds up her loins, as the Bible would say. “I want my brother back.”

“One could also say that to be a shepherd, God would have to be here—in this universe—within hearing distance, at the very least. But God is dead, isn’t he, Jael? But you knew this in your heart, didn’t you.”

“Strange words coming from an angel. If that’s who you are. Really.”

“Ever the skeptic.”

She shrugs. “Why are you here?”

“I want to make a deal. I am in need of a vessel—and you share the blood. Like Donnie did.”

“What?” her voice sharp.

“Donnie said yes, a long time ago. He had great faith.”

“Donnie saw God,” Jael says. “Don’t you see him – in the sky, in that cloud up there?”

Raphael laughs. “Not God. I saw the face of God, and when I offered to reveal his face to Donnie, he told me ‘no.’ That his faith was strong enough to believe sight unseen.”

“You took my brother from me—“

“Correction: he left. To do God’s work.”

“Your work.”

“Well. God’s work by proxy. After all—he left us a world to run.”

Jael’s throat works up and down. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Donnie’s service was faithful. But I am in need of more. I need a new vessel.”

She hitches in a breath. “Is that code for Donnie’s gone? Donnie’s dead?”

Raphael says, “All men return to dust.”

“Who killed him? Was it those men in the cameras? The one in the trench coat?”

Raphael is scornful. “As if they could kill me? No. It wasn’t them. It was another angel.” There’s silence. “Only an angel can kill another angel, did you know that? But do not fear. There will be retribution.”

She wonders if it’s the kind that only angels can give each other, but does not ask. “For Donnie? Or for you?”

“Can’t it be both? Say yes—and we can have what we both want.”

“Oh.” She’s laughing, she can’t help herself as she drags her fingers through her hair, tugging at her scalp until it pulls and pulls. “Fuck you.” She clasps her hands over her mouth, breaths deep and wet between her fingers. “I’ll be your new vessel, if you let me see Donnie again. Give me a chance to be part of his life—his afterlife—if he wants me, and I’ll say yes.”

“As you wish,” Raphael says. “I need to hear the word, though.”

“Hold your horses,” she says, letting the towel drop to the floor. She puts on her underwear, pulls on her nylons, slides her feet into her shoes. Buttons up her white blouse, and goes to the bathroom mirror where her lip gloss lies beside the sink. Uncaps it, drags it across her lips until she tastes raspberries.  She leans against the counter until it digs into her hip bones. Fogs the mirror with her breath. “Okay,” she says. “I’m ready. Let’s do this.” She catches her eye in her reflection. “Yes. I say yes.”

It’s like she becomes a pillar of fire, a beacon of light as Raphael fills her up, fills her to the brim until the words on her tongue aren’t hers, aren’t even English—and it’s as if the world becomes far away, out of reach of her fingers until she’s collapsed on the floor, legs buckled under her in a way that should have been painful, but wasn’t. Raphael brings them to their feet, and the face that looks back at them in the mirror isn’t their face, and Jael cannot bring herself to look them in the eye.

“Let’s get to work,” they say.


End file.
